[PAULUS libro septimo decimo ad Plautium. ] §5.4.3.prAntiqui libero uentri ita prospexerunt, ut in tempus nascendi omnia ei iura integra reseruarent: sicut apparet in iure hereditatium, in quibus qui post eum gradum sunt adgnationis, quo est id quod in utero est, non admittuntur, dum incertum est, an nasci possit.
[PAULUS libro septimo decimo ad Plautium.] The ancients made such provision for a free unborn child that they reserved all its rights intact until the time of its birth: as appears in the law of inheritance, in which those who are of a later degree of agnation than that of the child in the womb are not admitted, as long as it is uncertain whether it can be born.
ubi autem eodem gradu sunt ceteri quo et uenter, tunc quae portio in suspenso esse debeat, quaesierunt ideo, quia non poterant scire quot nasci possunt: ideo nam multa de huiusmodi re tam uaria et incredibilia creduntur, ut fabulis adnumerentur.
But where the others are of the same degree as the unborn child, they then questioned what share ought to remain in suspense, for the reason that they could not know how many could be born: for indeed, many so diverse and incredible things are believed concerning this matter that they are numbered among fables.
nam traditum est et quattuor pariter puellas a matre familias natas esse: alioquin tradidere non leues auctores quinquies quaternos enixam Peloponensi, multas Aegypti uno utero septenos.
For it is handed down both that four girls were born at one time to a mother of a family: moreover, authors of no small authority have recorded that a woman in the Peloponnese gave birth to four children five times, and that many in Egypt bore seven at a single birth.
sed et tregeminos senatores cinctos uidimus Horatios.
And we have also seen the triplet senators, the Horatii, wearing their official girdles.
sed et Laelius scribit se uidisse in Palatio mulierem liberam, quae ab Alexandria perducta est, ut Hadriano ostenderetur, cum quinque liberis, ex quibus quattuor eodem tempore enixa, inquit, dicebatur, quintum post diem quadragensimum.
Moreover, Laelius writes that he himself saw in the Palatine a free woman who had been brought from Alexandria to be shown to Hadrian, with five children, of whom, he says, she was said to have given birth to four at the same time, and the fifth forty days later.
quid est ergo? prudentissime iuris auctores medietatem quandam secuti sunt, ut quod fieri non rarum admodum potest, intuerentur, id est quia fieri poterat, ut tregemini nascerentur, quartam partem superstiti filio adsignauerint: τὸ γὰρ ἅπαξ ἢ δίς, ut ait Theophrastus, παραβαίνουσιν οἱ νομοθέται.
What is the rule then? The most prudent authorities of the law followed a certain middle course, so that they might regard that which can happen not altogether rarely; that is, because it could happen that triplets were born, they assigned a fourth part to a surviving son: "for legislators pass over what happens only once or twice," as Theophrastus says.
ideoque et si unum paritura sit, non ex parte dimidia, sed ex quarta interim heres erit:
And therefore, even if she is going to give birth to only one child, the existing son will in the meantime be heir not to a half share, but to a fourth: